“Displacement and the meaning of home, mourning, and memories are recurrent themes in the 16 stories in journalist Grabbe’s first collection. Emigrants from Russia and their descendants settle in France, Shanghai, and the U.S. While resilience is the quality most necessary to carving out an existence in an unfamiliar location, several characters remain stubbornly concerned with status. The protagonists include a teenager who witnesses the chaos and atrocities at the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917, a high-school girl whose mother dies from cancer and who must deal with an abusive father, an egotistical middle-aged woman who repeatedly reinvents herself, and a mother who abandons her children to travel to America in the 1920s with the hope of becoming an actress. One strong element in these stories is the tender portrayal of turbulent childhood feelings, needs (parental love, safety), and fears. An occasional drawback is sketchiness. Might this light, drifting narrative structure be intended to echo the characters’ movement from one country to another? In all, Grabbe presents a compassionate rendering of acclimation and its many challenges.” — Tony Miksanek
